Performer: Jimi Hendrix
Songwriter: Jimi Hendrix
Original Release: Rainbow Bridge
Year: 1971
Definitive Version: None, although there’s a killer snippet in the film
Jimi Plays Berkeley that really turned me on to this song.
If you’ve ever been to the
Kingston Mines in Chicago, you know that at the end of the night, the manager
or owner of the place announces closing time by saying, “You don’t have to go
home, but you can’t stay here.”
That’s pretty much how the
Journal sports department rolled at the White Horse. We always stayed until
they chased us out. Closing time was 2, but as long as we had placed our final
orders before 2, we were fine.
At about 2:30, Red, an
old-timer who had been there probably as long as the bar itself, would intone
over the loudspeaker: “Good morning, you have about 4 minutes and … 54 seconds
left to drink up.”
We asked Red once what the
54 seconds thing was about. It was the number of years that he’d been working.
So every year after New Year’s we’d toast when he’d change to 55 seconds or 56
seconds. Dan and I always wondered what he’d do when he got to 60. I just said
that he’d just say 61 seconds or whatever, but I wasn’t around long enough to
learn the answer.
After Red’s announcement,
they’d turn up the house lights, which was the official signal that it was time
to time to, well, maybe not go home but no longer stay there—except for one
time. I can’t remember the year, but after we were starting to get up to leave,
the bar owner—Tony, let’s say—came over with the bottle of Jack Daniels and
told us to sit down while he poured us all a pretty decent shot on the house.
When the owner of a bar is
pouring you a drink and tells you to stay, you stay, so that night we were
there till 3. It turns out that Tony had had a HUGE day at the racetrack and
felt like celebrating. We were much obliged.
Afterward, we almost always
went our separate ways. Regardless of how much I had had to drink, I’d go home.
Now this is the part of the
story where I’m supposed to make the obligatory “Kids, don’t drink and drive”
public-address announcement, and I agree that you shouldn’t drink and drive,
because you might spill it.
The truth is, yeah, I
could’ve killed myself and someone else during one of those late-night Horse
rides … but I didn’t. As Sam Kinison once said, sometimes you gotta drink and
drive because HOW ELSE ARE WE GONNA GET OUR CARS HOME, MAN?!
I have a natural
self-regulating system when it comes to alcohol. If I drink too much, I get
sick, and I detest getting sick, so I almost never drink too much. Usually, I
had eaten enough food and nursed my drinks long enough that I was fine when I
drove, and the fact of the matter is my route was mostly out in the middle of
nowhere and rare was the time I saw even another car on the other side of the
divided freeway, let alone on my side.
The only time I ever had a
driving problem in Flint was when I was driving TO work and someone nearly ran
me off the road on a snowy night—I did a 360 on the road at 50 mph, which will
get your heart pumping, let me tell you.
So I’d go home, and because
I was on a third-shift schedule, I’d usually stay up till about 6, just as it
was starting to get light out, before heading to bed.
But every once in a while,
there would be an after-party at someone’s place. For a while, I’d go afterward
to Brett’s, which was mostly on my way home. We both were having women trouble,
so we’d commiserate about that and about being stuck in Flint, while listening
to cool music. It was during these after-party sessions that he introduced me
to Funkadelic and I introduced him to Hendrix and specifically Hendrix Plays
Berkeley and this song.
Soon after that, I left to
take the job in Columbus, Brett also finally escaped Flint for a gig in Arizona
somewhere. I lost track of him soon after that, but I’m sure that no matter
where he is, he’s still listening to Funkadelic and staying funky.
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